Sign

I actually wanted some sort of sign from the women out there…a thumbs up…a we got your back…a sign of ANYTHING THAT SAYS I UNDERSTAND( in regards to my hair issue, but I will get to that in a minute)

ANYONE WHO READS MY BLOG oh great, caps lock on. Omg…..they know that I write about abuse. This is a non-abuse blog post.

Society deems our gender to be based on certain parameters. If you are a man your voice is to be low. If it is not then you will be made fun of for being gay. I know such person and it is cruel and bullying. They have told him he is gay because of his voice. His voice has made him a target because apparently only homosexual men have high pitched voices. Apparently our ignorant society have not ever been in a theater group or in public in general to notice that all men are not baritones. I have personally known gay men with very low voices and gay men with high voices. Who in the fuck cares what a voice sounds like unless you are singing on broadway! Really! I find it insulting to men who are gay to insinuate that they have a “type” of voice just as I find it insulting to a heterosexual male for labeling him because he has this society labeled acceptable or unacceptable voice too. What in the fuck is wrong with people!

I just looked up cartoons that I was going to post on gender. It was intended to be for women and how we are supposed to have large breasts and long hair. I find this cartoon with a woman yelling at another woman for breastfeeding while her husband who has large breasts says it is inappropriate to have your breasts out. So now we are supporting breastfeeding but insulting men who happen to have large breasts. “man boobs. ” How fucking rude. To say a man has man boobs. A man has breast tissue just as a woman. Who decided what that tissue was to made up of and how much was acceptable? So now if a man has what our society has deemed extra breast tissue well he may need to get that removed or heaven forbid he keep it and have relentless bullying over it. Whoever came up with man boobs is currently on my shit list. Leave the man alone.

I can go down to just skin. A man loses weight and his skin sags around his thighs and his breasts and he must then get it removed because someone has decided that this is something he should be ashamed of. Nah lets not focus on the fact that he spent a year losing 100 lbs, lets focus on the skin that isn’t perfect enough.

I won’t even get into the air brushing and the magazines of the unattainable beauty because that isn’t even real. We are talking real people judging real people on what they believe is how one gender should behave and look and how they shouldn’t. A man has long hair, he gets tossed a ton of questions. A man wears birkenstocks, tons more judgment. Who and when was it decided that men needed to be a certain look with certain voices and certain mannerisms to be called men. Who? And what of my friend Liz? I think this world is hard for me because I am tender hearted?! Pft. What about her! She was born a man, has a “man voice” has woman’s breasts, has a woman’s mind and feelings. How does she fit into these molds? She can’t. Not by the standards that are set right now. So then she is internally tortured by her own feelings of inadequacies towards being the woman that everyone else says she should be but can’t be. Other’s molds rule her, ruin her sense of self. That is just criminal.

So what does it take to be a woman? Well. Liz was born with both parts. God made her. Breasts and a penis. Mind of a woman. Voice of a society deemed man. She has no uterus. But I can tell you. She is a woman. Everything about her is a woman. Her physical appearance does not make her a woman. But she is one.

But women get bombarded from day one on how to look like and act like a woman. I had a friend a long time ago whose mother used to say that her hair was her most gorgeous feature. Her hair made her who she was. This always bothered me. Because what happens if she lost that luxurious hair. We have given her greatest attribute to a physical feature. Wouldn’t you like to be known for your ability to love and not the curl of your hair? I would! AND breasts. Don’t even get me started. We can’t show them when we are nursing but they are all over instagram. The size seems to matter. A woman gets implants and I have no clue if she has gotten the implant because she feels less of a woman without them, truly just wants larger breasts, was society provoked, or if her spouse guilted her into it. I know implants are a personal choice. I don’t judge anyone with our without them. I am merely pondering societies role in breasts in general.

If a woman has breast cancer, ovarian cancer, and through treatment loses her hair and her breasts and her uterus/ovaries, does that make her less of a woman! NOOOO! You are not a woman because of your body parts. But how may women who go through this have to go through the feelings of loss over their hair and their breasts because our society SAYS that long haired big breasted women are beautiful. That is what we are to aspire to be. Even though it is quite ironic that I saw a supermodel the other day with a Mohawk and small breasts walking the runway for victoria’s secret who advertises women with long silky hair and huge breasts.

What are we supposed to be. How are we to determine our beauty based on other’s opinions of our voice, how we talk, walk, dress, and how big or small our body parts are? We can’t. Bottom line is, we cannot ever know who we truly are, nor can we be content with who we truly are until we strip away society’s stigmas and “types”. Who we really are can have NOTHING to do with anyone else but us. We have to get to know who we are on an intimate deep level to discover what is far beyond what society will ever show you.

I write this stream of consciousness (yep I had to look up the spelling AGAIN) because of my current situation. I was thinking of many signs. The sign on my scooter that says Don’t touch me.

I was thinking of how my current hair situation is going to get me touched even more!

Here is the hair situation. Last night my hair broke off. That hair tie with all my hair in it is my hair…gone. Puff of the hair that was once attached to my head that is now in my hand.

Brace yourself because I will show you my “look” when I walked into my daughter’s room this morning. She has pink curtains which makes her entire room pink so that would be the pink hue to my otherwise alarming state.

Yep. I know. Shocking. When I look at my author page picture…that is just not me anymore. The pink picture room isn’t the me on my author page. Or is it? Do my physical attributes make me me?

Look at that gently applied make up by my daughter and nice curled hair also by my daughter. I just look so happy and pleasant. I actually was. I was petting my dog when this was taken. I was feeling happy.

So why do I not feel me now that my entire head of hair is broken off and I look like I put my head in a blender? Same reason I feel the way I feel when my stomach gets a fat roll I suppose. Same reason I feel the way I do when I look at my arm flab swinging because of my atrophy. I am supposed to have long pretty hair with a slender figure, right? There is no muscle disease or any disease at all in what society defines as a woman. That is what society wants me to look like. If not, imperfection, inattention to every physical part, gets you put on the joke of the walmart photos that circulate, which I find particularly cruel. Walmart photos that point out everything society finds unacceptable.

Why don’t we have a fucking website that circulated picture of OTHER things we find unacceptable. Things that really matter like cruelty and abuse and injustices. Nope. Society finds obesity and a woman with her dress accidentally tucked into her underwear as an injustice to their eyes.

How am I supposed to know who I am when my hair ALONE was the focus of me growing up and looking pretty. Even up until a few years ago my mother ALWAYS had a comment about my hair. Well mom. How do you like me now? Is this embarrassing enough for you? Ah you’re ok. We aren’t talking anyway so you don’t have to be mortified if your friends see me. Yeah because the pictures get worse! I went out in the wheelchair and got rained on!!!!

Good heavens that is bad. But come on it is kind of funny too really~ my daughter laughed and then I laughed and then i realized how absurd the ginormous (is that a word?) emphasis on women’s hair there is.

So I had a panic. Not because of society. Not because of my mother. But because of my husband. What would he think. I know he loved my long curly hair. What if….so many what ifs…but in true good husband form he told me I could rock a pat benatar look if need be and he loved my beautiful face anyway. God love the man. I’m sure I will have a panic while getting it cut. Change panics me. New panics me. Lets be honest. Everything panics me.

So, since my hair is, in most places only an inch long and then I’ve got THIS as seen above other stuff going on, it will need to be cut pretty short. I think more people will want to pat my head while in my scooter so my scooter sign will be imperative. I should have been all …hell yea lets get some new rocker look. But at first, I just wanted to be the me in my author page picture. That feels like me. The one whose body isn’t atrophied and whose eye isn’t swelled shut and whose hair didn’t all break off.

As a woman, who am I without what society says makes me a woman.

I’ve always been the same me. I’ve always cared about the animals, the elderly, and children. Hated any injustice. Really disliked prejudice and discrimatory people. I’ve always accepted people nomatter what they look like on the exterior, gender preference, or gender in general. I’ve always sought out friends with beautiful insides instead. It took me until I was 43 years old to accept my past and see that through my past and my present, my inner beauty has remained the same.

So I may not be deemed society’s pretty girl because my hair will be gone, can’t wear those heels in my scooter, can’t even wear a dress because dressy shoes hurt my joints.

I have decided that I don’t need society’s approval for deeming myself beautiful. Your voice does not make you beautiful. Your hair does not make you beautiful. Your car, clothes, size, does not make you who you are. On my gravestone I do not want it said “her hair was her greatest attribute.” I want the sign on my stone to say, “A mother and wife with a beautiful heart.” That’s all that matters, how I loved. And I have absolutely truly loved.

I so very much agree with you… Beautiful dress, face hair does not make a person beautiful if the heart is not.. for me beauty lies within.. and u sure do have a beautiful heart.. which shows in your eyes.. physical attributes can be changed but what matters is heart.. the soul..

So ignore ur hair.. once u recover it will be back soon .. love u and a big hug to u..

You are my dear.. so u make the people who get in touch with u precious.. 😊😊 u have never given up and I know now also u will not.. the girl in the profile pic will be back soon beautiful and radiating as ever..😍😍

I had a lot of issues between me and my mother and my husband about hair, so I’m 100% with you on this. Having less hair does NOT make you less beautiful in any way, but I can see that it might be very painful for you to lose your hair when it was not your choice, and it is not vanity or giving in to false values imposed by society to grieve that loss of choice.
PS that little handful of hair makes me think of the colours of your baby owls ❤

Awwww how sweet is that!!! It does look like their colors!!!!!
Yes, it Is different to have a loss than for it to just be vanity purposes. I had not really thought about it like that at all! Thank you for pointing that out. I’ve had 45 years of long hair so it is going to take getting used to and i haven’t even had it cut yet. Just walking around with hair doused water so as not to alarm the family too much on a moment to moment basis.
Thankyou a lot for understanding!

This is powerful. You are amazing, super fantastic, I mean it, your awesomeness is a beautiful and inspirational thing to behold. Wow!

My hair has been breaking off like crazy lately too, what’s up with that? And I’m 64, so I look in the mirror at this old lady’s face, and try to remember how I looked when strangers, both men and women and children too, would randomly stop me on the street to tell me how beautiful I was.

Is it better to have been beautiful and then lose your beauty, or is it better to never be beautiful at all, so you don’t have to grieve the loss of your beauty? I don’t know, but I think it would be better to never be beautiful.

But then, you know, what the hell. This is how I look now, and who cares? What is, is.

Those are some powerful ponderings right there!!!
I can relate as I post a picture on facebook,which I try to nolonger do and it is of me waterskiing and I will have those who knew me then and now and comment…ahh yes there she is. Like THIS me has disappeared. Sorry people that I don’t have those abs. Iwas only 18. I’m 45 now. I got gray early. 30 or so.
Thank you for writing this for me!!!!! You are so kind to me! And understanding of my thought patterns.

I have always loved the quote from The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint Exupery.

“What is essential is invisible to the eye.” The world is concerned with non-essentials. When we miss someone who has died, it is not because they were beautiful on the outside but because they were beautiful on the inside.

I am a woman and I have your back. My name is Savannah and I agree with you, and I have caught myself at times quick to judgement over something society has ground into my head. Someone’s I am surprised at my thoughts. I don’t feel that any outside attribute matters. It is important that we build one another up not tare each other down.

Homophobia and sexism make targets of anyone who doesn’t conform. It’s stupid. The original form of reproduction on planet Earth was asexual. Genders came later and exaggerated gender behaviors came even later. What’s weird is we still have to push back against the idea that women and gays are not fully human.

Any one who does not fit into the mold. Put me in my wheelchair, I don’t fit in, cut my hair, I don’t fit in, give me chemical sensitivities, I don’t fit in. And everyone and everything in between such as you mentioned. You are absolutely right